The government of Pakistan has made the zeroing and closure of the National Welfare Fund (NWF) a condition for the continuation of negotiations on a new financial assistance package on July 10, the Pro Pakistan Agency reported.
According to the Fund’s experts, this step is necessary to ensure transparency and reporting of the seven profitable state-owned companies that were transferred to the FNB department last year.
The IMF is demanding that Pakistan’s GNF be eliminated by September 30, 2024. At the same time, the recent meeting of the IMF delegation, headed by local mission head Naitan Porter, with representatives of the Ministry of Finance ended without a resolution, and the IMF refused to budge on the conditions for providing assistance.
The IMF believed that Pakistan did not have the capital to invest in the NFB and would therefore lose control over strategic assets. Instead, the IMF experts urged the government to strengthen privatisation legislation and not to sell these assets.
The Pakistani government has asked for time to make this decision, but experts are not sure whether it will be taken or not.
It should be recalled that earlier the IMF took an extremely tough position on the conditions for granting loans to Pakistan. The country, which was in an extremely difficult economic situation in the previous two years, fulfilled all the IMF requirements exactly without changes.
Currently, the IMF can provide Pakistan with up to $8 billion (705 billion rubles) for a period of three years or 39 months.
Earlier, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb expressed confidence that the country will be able to reach an agreement with the IMF at staff level on a new assistance package until the end of July 2024.
Read also: IMF asks Pakistan to introduce 45% tax on agricultural income
Source: Rossa Primavera
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